MetronomyMar 6, 2012 2KHz, London, England

Words by Sean Moeller, Illustration by Johnnie Cluney, Recording engineered by Ian Grimble and Richard Matthews at 2KHz at Church Studios in Crouch End, London

The candle has been burning at both ends for a number of weeks now and, as everyone's felt, that catches up to you. This morning was one of those mornings where the morning just simply got away. There was no getting it back and there was little wanting it back. It just expired before anyone could touch it. Sleep just piled on, drowning the eyes heavier and heavier. It was one of those sleeps that makes you remember it vividly throughout the entire rest of the day. There's no rubbing it out of your head. It's a sleep that wants you back, back in that blueish haze where you're worried about all of the imagined catastrophes, battling death and the apocalypse, just like every other human being when they lay themselves down. Metronomy's Joseph Mount and Anna Prior, sing on the song "She Wants," "The hours come/The hours come," and they continue, in unison for a while, reminding us. It's soothing and it's maddening at the same time. It's a reminder of the barrage of time and also, seemingly, of a city that eats and eats and cares little for what meets its teeth and stomach.

When you listen to Metronomy, you're overcome with a feeling of nostalgic bliss and one of insistent, though mild drama. It's a feeling of living in a metropolis, liking it mostly, but still having that nettlesome yearning of fleeing, of getting back on holiday, when there is so much less to worry about, when you're actually able to be with another person, to feel as if you're not half losing your head all of the time. It's about not having to over-think anything, about just letting your body wake up when it wants to, sleep when it wants to and roll with the hours in whatever way they seem to want to bend and curl. "The Look" is a song that appears to be about what happens when we're unable to tell heads from tails and we're just running around in circles, looking for solutions in magazines and elsewhere.

Mount sings, "Cause you read it in a big book/Now you're giving me the look," and it sounds like whatever was read is contributing to a sensation of being sick of the passing time, of wanting to escape somehow. It's as if there's a suggestion of learned seduction, of strange complacency in the form of passion. It's tough to get around and it's tough to be around. It sends the mind headed straight for the sea and sweet memories. Maybe they'll come back to us. Or we'll get to them, when we can shake our drowsy complications. We can get back to where "there's endless beaches that go on and on."